Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving Day
Written by Barbara Vesey
The window feels cold under my hand. It must be very cold outside, in spite of the bright sunshine that pours in on me, making me blink. I am sitting in the kitchen, having my first cup of coffee and my first cigarette of the day. Usually I have a certain amount of trouble getting up in the morning; I lie there with a feeling of familiar but completely unfounded dread, never ready to face the world. But this morning is different. I am up early just so I can move about the kitchen, doing the pre-preliminary and completely unnecessary things like looking at the turkey to make sure it is thawing OK. Mostly I wanted some quiet time to myself just to sit here at the rickety kitchen table with my cup and cigarette and look out the grimy window at the frosted patch of grass separating our house from the one next door. I keep meaning to clean this window, but I only mean it in a half-hearted kind of way. Looking at it now, I think it is kind of nice this way: where the clean and not-so-clean parts of the pane meet you can pick out certain shapes. There is a ridge, a small mountain range of clean beneath the open sky of grayness, and then one ridiculous dragon-shaped creature high atop one of the mountains, awaiting battle or maybe just taking stock of his situation.The water is boiling. I fill my cup almost full and bring it back to the table. Just then Tony's sister comes in. She arrived yesterday in her dingy red rent-a-car, and she drove the five of us to the grocery and liquor stores for last-minute purchases. She is talkative and clever, with a low, hearty chuckle that is infectious. She resembles Tony in this, and in her dry sense of humor. Last night she was telling me that she has visited Tony at school before, of course, but that this was the first time he was living in a real off-campus house. I smile at her now. I am glad of this chance to talk to Sally, to ask her about Tony, to exchange observations. He lives here with the four of us, all women, and I know that at times he feels left out or uneasy. Sometimes I get along best with him; some nights we sit on the long couch in the living room and hear the others arguing aesthetics or feminist politics, their voices coming to us insistently from the kitchen, and we catch each other's eye and smile. I feel like a traitor doing this, sometimes, but sometimes they can argue things to death, taking all the joy out of them, and of being here in this big wooden house, with its yellow-and-white kitchen with its wood floor and dusky window.
'Did you sleep OK?'
'Oh, yes,' Sally says, looking around for a match to light her cigarette. I reach into the pocket of my robe and rummage out my lighter, extending my arm, offering to her. Extending my arm feels really good, and I try to prolong the gesture without being too obvious. Sally takes the light but then rises from the table. 'I don't think I'm ready to be up yet,' she explains, grinning. 'I think I'll go back to bed for a while.' I am a little relieved. When I want it, time along is best, especially morning. I get up and walk about the kitchen. I take a look at Mr. Turkey. He is thawing really well. I decide it may be time to preheat the oven.
The turkey has bulky plastic sacks inside. The instructions on the wrapper say THESE MUST BE REMOVED. They are freezing cold, and when I finish extracting them my fingers are stiff with cold. There is also thin watery reddish liquid everywhere which I try not to think of as blood. Under the hot tap water I feel my fingers beginning to perk up. When I was little if my foot fell asleep I would throw water on it, thinking you had to do the same thing you might do to a person if they could not be awakened by ordinary means.
I can hear someone moving through the living room and into the bathroom. Vaguely disappointed, I light my second cigarette of the day and put more water on for coffee. The oven is giving off a dry warmth. I'll have to get dressed and go out to buy walnuts, but it is beginning to snow outside, tiny crisp-looking flakes that probably won't stick. I knot my robe more closely around me and go back to the table. I sit down to wait, blinking in the sunshine, watching the light snow fall against the clean-part-of-the-window mountain range.